Of the Passing

Unnatural,
when babies pitter patter
to paradise beyond parenting,
“so still he be
and he be there.”

Nothing natural
when time escapes
“not dead, but escaped,”
before the sands fall
or eulogy calls
to report a past
that lasts.

“There be a there,”
naturally,
lest sanity
pitter patter to paradise
with thee.

___________________

Acknowledgment: All of Sandra Staton-Taiwo’s poems in this issue appear courtesy of Broadside Lotus Press, first published in Broad Sympathies in a Narrow World: The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois (Detroit: Broadside Lotus Press, 2018), 3, 17, 55-56, 59, 32.